Asian broadcaster's claim that BBC treated her as 'illiterate' fails

An Asian broadcaster with BBC Wales who claimed she was treated like an "illiterate native under the Raj" has had her claim of racial discrimination rejected.

Annand Jasani, 53 – who was born in India, brought up in Tanzania and moved to Britain in 1967 – claimed she had been bullied and degraded while hosting a flagship show for Asians. But BBC Wales confirmed yesterday that the case had been thrown out.

Mrs Jasani's weekly show, A Voice for All, was launched in the late 1980s after she was headhunted by the BBC. She won several Asian media awards and was appointed MBE, while the show was shortlisted as Best Radio Entertainment alongside Goodness Gracious Me. It had featured interviews with, among others, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.

But Mrs Jasani, of Penarth, said she was belittled and told that the BBC was not in the business of running an Asian channel for a programme that had an audience of only 2,000. She claimed that matters came to a head in the summer of 1999 when she was summoned by a programme controller to a meeting where the show was allegedly denigrated.

Mrs Jasani told an employment tribunal in Cardiff that her doctor husband and two daughters worked for nothing to ensure the show could keep going.

BBC Wales's head of programmes, Keith Jones, said after the ruling: "We were never in doubt that our treatment of Mrs Jasani had been anything less than fair and equitable throughout and we are grateful that the tribunal has recognised this fact in its judgment.

"In this particular case, the complaint related to a grievance which arose some three years ago and was the subject of a further review at the instigation of Menna Richards after she became controller of BBC Wales in February 2000."

Mr Jones added: "That inquiry revealed that Mrs Jasani was treated throughout with scrupulous fairness – standards we shall continue to maintain in all our relations with our staff."